Project Manager — Transforming Value Chains

Project Manager — Transforming Value Chains

Location: Flexible (UK South East preferred); work will mainly be remote, home-based.
Salary: Competitive, commensurate with experience
Contract: Full-time, one year contract (with potential to renew)
Start Date: as soon as possible

About Ostara

We believe a deeper crisis lies behind today’s global challenges, which explains why progress has stalled: a crisis of separation and imagination. Separation from ourselves, each other, and the natural world has fuelled extractive and exploitative systems, leading to fragmented efforts and a weak basis for collective action. At the same time, our inability to see beyond existing paradigms—the crisis of imagination—keeps us locked in cycles of incrementalism.

Ostara was founded in 2024 to address these dual crises. Our mission is to restore relationships to ourselves, each other, and the Earth, building engaged communities of changemakers to reimagine and catalyse the emergence of an economy in service of life.

Our work centres on convening diverse stakeholders in Imaginal Studios—collaborative spaces where diverse stakeholders come together to unlock latent potential, explore new possibilities and co-create solutions applied to discrete complex environmental challenges, such as value chain transformation and nature finance. Each Imaginal Studio blends immersive, nature-based experiences with design thinking and systems analysis to catalyse new ideas and invite participants to rethink their roles and agency for long-term systemic transformation.

The Role

The Project Manager – Transforming Value Chains will be pivotal in ensuring the success of Ostara’s cornerstone project. This role will focus on all aspects of managing, tracking progress and delivering the project, across its different international locations and deliverables. As part of the project, over the course of 2025 we expect to convene between 6 and 10 workshops for 20-30 people each, across three locations in the Pacific, Europe and the US. It is ideal for someone highly organised, detail-oriented, at ease in multi-cultural environments, and passionate about driving meaningful change.

Key Responsibilities

• Project Management: Develop and maintain detailed project plans, ensuring milestones and deliverables are met across the project’s different locations.
• Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E): Create and implement frameworks to measure project progress, capturing insights and acting upon them to inform ongoing work.
• Stakeholder Coordination: Work closely with diverse teams and external partners, ensuring seamless communication and alignment across geographies.
• Grant Reporting: Prepare high-quality progress reports, synthesising key findings and recommendations for stakeholders and funders.
• Risk Management: Anticipate and mitigate risks to ensure projects are delivered on time and with maximum impact.

Required Skills and Experience

• Minimum 8 years demonstrated expertise in project management, preferably in the sustainability or development sectors.
• Strong skills in planning, tracking, and evaluating complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives.
• Exceptional organisational and time-management abilities.
• Experience in grant reporting and working with donors or funders.
• Demonstrated commitment to collaborative approaches to problem-solving and innovation.
• This role is best suited for someone with an entrepreneurial mindset, aligned with Ostara’s values and mission, keen to work at a global level across time-zones, and who thrives in an agile and emergent start-up setting.

We are committed to ensuring our team is representative of the diverse world around us and therefore we encourage candidates with a diversity of backgrounds to apply.

Why Work With Us?

• Ostara is a new organisation building its team and growing its first initiatives in 2025. We are a small dedicated team driven by our values and vision. Joining as one of Ostara’s first team members is an opportunity to be part of an exciting period of development in an emergent start-up setting.
• Work with a passionate, values-led team committed to fostering creativity, collaboration, and systemic change, and advancing bold new approaches.
• Contribute to transformative work that addresses some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

How to Apply

To apply for this role, please send your CV and a cover letter to Bekah at rebekah@ostaracollective.org, ideally by 20th January 2025. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.